- Priyanka Chopra Jonas told BBC 100 Women she used to earn 10% of her male coworkers' salary in Bollywood.
- The actress also said she used to be shamed for her "dusky" complexion.
Despite a successful Bollywood career in which she starred in over 60 films, Priyanka Chopra Jonas told BBC 100 Women she was always paid less than her male co-stars.
"I've never had pay parity in Bollywood. I would get paid about 10% of the salary of my male co-actor," Chopra Jonas said.
Even with the experience she's amassed today, the actor believes she would still have to deal with a large pay gap if she worked with a male co-actor in Bollywood now — even though her generation of female actors has asked for equal pay.
"We've asked, but we've not got it," Chopra Jonas said.
Recalling her days in the Indian film industry, the 40-year-old spoke about how normal it was to spend hours waiting around for her male co-stars.
"I thought it was absolutely OK to sit for hours and hours on set, while my male co-actor just took his own time, and decided whenever he wanted to show up on set is when we would shoot," she said.
Bollywood's longstanding obsession with fair skin caused her to be body-shamed due to her complexion.
"I was called 'black cat', 'dusky'. I mean, what does 'dusky' even mean in a country where we are literally all brown?" Chopra Jonas said. "But it is up to our generation to be able to cut those ties and change it so that the next generation doesn't inherit the equity placed on light skin."
Chopra Jonas' role in the upcoming science fiction series "Citadel," which will be available on Amazon Prime Video, marks the first time in her 22-year career that she received equal pay as her male co-star, she told BBC 100 Women.